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up vote 4 down vote favorite

is there any tool to trace the methods the program control travels ? I am using Java in eclipse .

I am looking for a tool , that will

  1. Give the method names that the control has travelled.

  2. Give the input parameters and the return type of the methods .

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there was a tool that hooked calls for auditing thick clients written in java...can't remember the name right now, but it was presented at a small conference last year. if i find it, I'll post – Call me V Mar 8 '11 at 6:47
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AspectJ might allow you to hook the calls. – Peter Taylor Mar 8 '11 at 7:06
Agree with @Peter - you need to look into byte code rewriting to be able to do this, as this information is not made available by the code as it is.. – user1249 Mar 8 '11 at 7:09
@Thorbjørn, or using the same VM hooks as jdb - but I think there's more likely to be a convenient tool based around byte code rewriting. – Peter Taylor Mar 8 '11 at 7:12
I found the API I was looking for although not the tool that uses it. Gets you most of the way there... – Call me V Mar 12 '11 at 18:45

3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

Actually, having thought about this a bit more, jvisualvm allows you to hook into a running VM and specify a set of classes or methods at which to start profiling (and classes or methods not to profile). This is probably the most straightforward approach. It won't give you the parameter values, but I interpret your question as asking for full method signatures, and that it will do.

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up vote 1 down vote

Although you mentioned Eclipse as your IDE, you may be interested in looking at Intellij which offers the "Analyze Data Flow to Here" and "Analyze Data Flow from Here" features.

http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2009/08/analyzing-dataflow-with-intellij-idea/

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In eclipse this feature is called "Open Call Hierarchy" – Michael Borgwardt Aug 24 '11 at 8:23
up vote 0 down vote

The reflection API lets you do this type of thing. Basic intro here: http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/reflect/index.html

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